The audience for a piece of writing is whoever is reading the piece of writing. Genre refers to the style or type of writing in which something is written. While seemingly unconnected, audience and genre are actually closely related. Certain genres correspond to certain types of audiences. For example, a fantasy novel has a different audience than a nonfiction novel, because in general, younger people tend to read more novels in the fantasy genre, and more adults tend to read novels in the genre of nonfiction. Another example could be letters. Hand written letters are a type of genre that has an older audience as well. When writing for a specific audience, it is important to know what genres that group is reading. And the other way around, when writing in one specific genre, it is important to keep in mind the most likely audience for that specific genre.
Solid job on explaining the general connection between genre and audience. However, some of the examples of genre you give are literary genres (fantasy, nonfiction, etc.) rather than writing genres (reviews, blog posts, research papers, etc.). If you were to revise this post, I would instead choose a specific writing genre or two as your examples and describe the specific audiences associated with those genres. You mention handwritten letters, for example; while in practice most handwritten letters pass between members of an older generation, consider that (for example) a mother might write a short handwritten letter to their college kid; in this case, the audience would not be older. It might be useful to keep in mind the exceptions to certain generic/audience-related assumptions.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, your general statements of the connection between genre and audience make sense.
Grade: Check